


What Dreams May Come

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drama, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:53:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's been having a little trouble sleeping ... For prompt: Insomnia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

The thing about sleep is that you don’t really miss it until it’s gone. You don’t realize how vital to life it is—any kind of life worth living, anyway. Sleep soothes away all the fears and worries that press down on you during your waking hours: gives you some down time from all the madness.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean hadn’t been getting all that much sleep lately: not since he made that moronic deal with the crossroads demon. He drank, or he watched movies on the laptop, or he fucked three different girls from dusk until dawn. One night, when they were hunting a demon in a small town on Cape Cod, Sam found his brother swimming in the ocean at three in the morning.

Naked.

When Dean fell asleep at the wheel a week later and nearly drove them into a tree, Sam finally lost it and snapped, “Damn it, Dean! You need to get some rest, or you’re gonna get us both killed!”

Dean just scrubbed a hand over his face and switched places with him, curling up against the passenger door.

Sam’s jaw was tight with frustration as he started the Impala up again. He glared straight ahead, feeling his brother’s eyes on him: feeling Dean’s calm, accepting gaze _(and when the fuck had Dean Winchester ever_ accepted _anything?)_ burning a brand into the side of his face.

“You can’t keep going like this, man,” Sam said, flexing his hands on the wheel. He more sensed than saw his brother’s shrug next to him.

“Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead, Sammy.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There’s this disorder—Morvan’s syndrome, it’s called—that allows people to go without sleep for months at a time. Sam can’t really wrap his head around it. Of course, he’s also read that people who have Morvan’s generally suffer severe hallucinations once or twice a day. So maybe they’re getting the same dreaming benefits that a normal person gets from sleep.

Maybe that’s how they keep from going completely insane.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They were both so sure that they’d gotten off easily with that curse. After all, it wasn’t like Dean wasn’t already having problems in that department.

“Insomnia,” Dean snorted as they headed back to the car, the imp nothing more than a pile of soot behind them. “What a fucking joke.”

They laughed themselves sick for two weeks, which was when they finally figured out that the damned thing had meant ‘insomnia’ in the literal, rather than the popular sense.

Insomnia. Without sleep.

His eyes bloodshot and puffy, Dean uttered his last, bitter laugh on the subject before asking, “So, how long do you think I’ve got now?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Fatal familial insomnia is exactly what it sounds like: a death sentence. Dean doesn’t have the disease, of course, but it’s the only explanation that the doctors can come up with when they examine him.

Fatal familial insomnia, Sam learns, has four documented stages. At first, the patient suffers from steadily increasing insomnia. Panic attacks and waking hallucinations are the hallmarks of the second stage. The third heralds the onslaught of complete sleeplessness, and the patient begins his final descent, dropping anywhere from thirty to sixty pounds in under a month. The last, terminal stage is marked by dementia as the patient withdraws into some private hell that no one else could possibly comprehend.

It’s not fair, damn it. It’s not fair that Dean’s been damned twice.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean burst out laughing next to him, and Sam barely managed to avoid swerving them into a ditch at the unexpected sound. Once they were securely on the road again, he spared a glance at his brother.

Dean was staring out the passenger window and grinning at nothing in particular. He looked washed out in the bright afternoon sunlight: the shadows underneath his eyes so dark they looked like smudges of charcoal. His hair was longer than it should have been, and one stray strand flopped over one of his eyes. He hadn’t bothered to do anything with it in weeks, and the only reason that he wasn’t sporting a mountain-man beard was that Sam took the time to shave him every morning.

It would have been easier to let the beard come in, but Sam was having enough trouble pretending that everything was fine—that everything was going to be okay—without that taunting reminder that his brother was slipping away right in front of him. Dean had bitched about it the first time Sam sat him down on the toilet and pulled out the razor, but lately he’d been too out of it to put up much of a fight.

“Dean?” Sam tried softly. “You okay, man?”

Dean turned dead eyes toward the road and blinked slowly. “Those rabbits better not crap on my hood, Sammy,” he rasped.

Sam’s throat tightened as he looked out at the highway. At the Impala’s bare, dusty hood. “They won’t,” he promised.

Dean grunted and drifted deeper into himself.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The ancient Greeks believed that the god of sleep, Hypnos, had a twin brother: Thanatos, the god of death. Like night and day, or perhaps madness and hell, they’re two sides of the same coin. But although Dean’s always been a gambling man, Sam doesn’t think that the toss is going to come down in his favor this time.

Not unless Sam can find a way to cheat.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Well, well, well … Look who it is.”

“You said he had a year,” Sam growled.

The dark-haired demon sashayed closer, casting a glance at the Impala, where Dean was busy watching some invisible nightmare dart around his head. He’d lost enough weight that lifting him into the car hadn’t been much more of an effort than toting their bags out from the room. Dean hadn’t argued; hadn’t said anything for days now. Sam wasn’t even sure his brother knew he was there.

He knew that Dean would have been pissed if he knew what Sam was doing, but he’d deal with that later. They’d spent the last four months trying everything that they could get their hands on—drugs, rituals, charms: nothing had worked. Dean was out of options and out of time, and Sam couldn’t just sit here and watch his brother, insane and wasted, die three months early.

Fuck the consequences.

“How’ve you been, Sammy?” the demon asked as she turned her attention back to him. “Having any luck hunting down information on mommy dearest?” The bitch knew he wasn’t here for that, of course, but she was going to prod him a bit before they got down to business.

If Sam was really, really lucky, he might be able to push back.

Unlocking his throat, he ordered, “Fix him.”

“Mmm … What’s in it for me?” The demon pressed up against his chest with a coy bat of her eyelashes.

“Nothing,” Sam told her. “You’re gonna fix him, and then you’re gonna get the hell out of our way until his time’s up.”

Her smile sharpened. “Funny. I thought Dean was a comedian, but you … You two should take your act on the road, maybe hit up Vegas. Of course, in your brother’s case, it might be a little late for a career change …” With a cruel chuckle, the demon turned and started to slink away.

Sam wanted to yell out for her to wait—every millimeter of his skin was screaming at him to beg her, to promise anything she wanted if she’d just fix this. Instead, he forced himself to swallow his pleas: groveling for this bitch wasn’t going to help Dean.

Keeping his voice as casual as he could make it, Sam said, “Your loss.”

The demon paused at that, and then cast a smoldering, red glance over her shoulder. “Oh, really?”

“You let Dean go out like this and he’s already gonna be broken when you get your hands on him,” Sam continued, trying to ignore the empty ache lodged in his chest.

“And?”

“It’d be more fun to break him yourself, wouldn’t it?” Sam’s throat closed up on him and he had to clear it before he could finish, “It’s no fun when they’re too insane to know what’s happening to them, is it?”

 _Sorry, Dean._

The demon’s eyes narrowed as she turned to face him. “He’ll scream just as pretty.”

“But it won’t be the same, will it?” Sam pressed. “Not as—” He paused as his stomach rolled—this was Dean he was talking about, this was his _brother_ —and then whispered, “Not as satisfying.”

She moved toward him again, like a shark scenting bloodied water. “Tell you what. You come with Dean when his time’s up and we’ve got a deal.”

“No.” He gave his head a sharp shake. “You’ll do it because you want to watch him suffer. You want Dean, not a used-up shell.”

She gave him a sweet smile and leaned up on her tiptoes, resting her hands lightly on his shoulders for balance. “What makes you think I give a damn one way or the other?” she purred, her breath warm across his cheek.

Sam kept his mouth shut and didn’t move.

After a few moments, she dropped back down. “Fine. You’re right; it’ll be more interesting your way.”

In the car, Dean gave a sudden, shuddering groan and slumped sideways. With his head lolling against the window and his mouth gaping open, he looked dead. It took Sam a few frantic seconds to make out the slow rise and fall of his brother’s chest. Not dead, but sleeping. Finally.

“Thank God,” he breathed.

“God has nothing to do with it,” the demon reminded him. “And you make sure he knows it. Make sure he knows that he has you to thank for the fact that he’ll be sane when I start taking him apart.”

The ache in Sam’s chest intensified at her words, but he squared his shoulders and met her gaze squarely. “I’m not letting you take him,” he promised. “Not without a fight.”

The demon’s smile widened. “Oh, I’m counting on it, baby.” She turned without another word and glided off into the darkness.

Sam stared after her for a long while with his jaw working and then headed over to the Impala. Sitting quietly in the driver’s seat, he watched Dean sleep. He thought about the future: about the furious shouting he’d have to listen to in the morning.

Three months left. Three months that his brother hadn’t had an hour ago. Three months for Sam to find the loophole that Dean and the bitch of a demon he’d made a deal with didn’t think existed.

Sam leaned his head against the headrest and, smiling, waited for his brother to wake up.


End file.
